


troubleshooting

by thir13enth



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-29 09:08:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8483575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thir13enth/pseuds/thir13enth
Summary: Hunk isn’t an idiot, but he sure doesn’t mind acting like one. Hunk/Pidge (is that Punk? Hidge? idk???)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Insanedragongirl100](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Insanedragongirl100/gifts).



> i'm such an idiot and of course, left everything to the last minute and missed the deadline.  
> i truly hope this gets to go through to the exchange though! :(  
>  **insanedragongirl100** , i hope you enjoy!!! (regardless of whether or not this goes through!)
> 
> i used **she/her** pronouns for Pidge in this piece.

Hunk’s fingers have hovered over the keyboard, frozen and uninspired for the last five minutes. The cursor on the computer’s blue screen blinks expectantly at him, waiting for some programming input.

However, he has nothing to offer, and his stomach has growled about fourteen times within the last hour — which means it’s about time for him to give up.

“Hey, uh, Pidge?” he calls over his shoulder.

She swivels around in her chair, which makes a dissatisfied squeak as she turns to face him.

It’s clear she isn’t happy that he interrupted whatever genius invention she’s been working on, and he can see it in her narrowed eyes and pouted bottom lip.

“What?” she says — because it’s a question but it sounds like a statement.

He hesitates — but he’s already interrupted her, and he supposes that a “nevermind” would actually make things worse, so he goes ahead and asks:

“How do you…fix this bug?” he asks, before explaining further. “I’ve been working on this recursive loop, and I’m trying to compile but I keep getting an error message, and I haven’t been able to figure out exactly where the error is coming from.”

He waits for a little bit to take a breath and to watch her reaction, but he gets no words and a blank unamused expression from her.

“I mean…I’ve been trying to figure it out and I think it has to do _something_ with this internal counter that I’ve built into the loop because it’s counting up in prime numbers and I feel like I could have probably messed up the formula deriving that or something,” he continues to blurt. “And well, I’ve used this same internal counter before in another program that worked — I basically just copy-pasted from that one — but maybe this counter just doesn’t work with the other methods of the program I wrote? I mean, theoretically it shouldn’t but that’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

He realizes that maybe he’s said a bit too much at once. It’s around this time that he gives her a sheepish smile.

“And that’s why I’m asking you for help — because you’re really smart.”

Her silence shortly afterward tells him that while she isn’t happy about getting out of the comfortable position she’s drifted into in her chair and walking over to him, she is also isn’t going to just let him hang loose with an unsolved problem.

And so she does just that, letting out a deep sigh before she stands up from her seat.

This is only half of why he loves asking her to help him — Pidge always solves the problem. There’s always that shady judgmental look that she gives him and that deep roll of her eyes because she can’t believe that he doesn’t know how to do whatever simple thing he needs — then she helps him anyway.

“I’m not smart — I’m just really stubborn, and computer programs hate persistence,” she says, somewhat under her breath, as she approaches him.

“No, really,” he insists. “You’re super smart. Don’t discredit yourself.”

He turns his head to look at her, and almost jumps back when he realizes that she’s looking over his shoulder at the computer screen and when he realizes just how close her face is to his. But it’s a good thing that he doesn’t flail his arms because otherwise he would have probably knocked her out, and he would have had a second problem on hand.

His heart still thumping hard and his cheeks starting to feel like they’re on fire, he watches her eyes scanning the text on the screen quickly.

The other half of why he loves asking her to help him is that he likes _watching_ her solve the problem — her teeth chewing her bottom lip, her hand occasionally pushing her glasses up higher on her nose (the frame always slips off), her index finger twirling the ends of her short unruly brown hair, her eyes bright, her eyebrows furrowed.

Sometimes she doesn’t say a word while she reasons through the problem. Other times she talks to herself, muttering incoherent words from her stream of consciousness.

But regardless of her method, at the end of the day, she always solves the problem.

“Oh,” she says, within four or five minutes. “Try this.”

She reaches her hands over to the keyboard, rapidly firing some characters onto his screen before pressing the return key with great confidence, waiting for the compilation result.

_[ E R R O R. ]_

“What?” she asks, confused by why her fix doesn’t resolve the problem. She shakes her head lightly. “I don’t get why…what?”

Hunk blinks several times, also surprised that at the error notification on his screen after Pidge’s troubleshooting. Pidge doesn’t usually fail to find a solution…

“Oh!” he remarks, sitting up in his chair and then making one quick keystroke.

He presses enter and — the program compiles, without error.

Pidge’s eyes widen. “What?” she asks him. “What did you do?”

“Oh the code was just missing an extra parenthesis here,” he explains, with a brief shrug.

He tries not to gloat too hard — but Pidge narrows her eyes.

“You _knew_ what was wrong this entire time, didn’t you?” she accuses.

He can’t lie to her, especially when she’s hit the nail right on the head.“Well, no, not the _entire_ time,” he defends, putting his hands up, as if shielding himself from the fury emanating from her.

“ _Admit it_ ,” she demands, placing her fists on her hips. “You just wanted to bother me.”

“What? No!” he stutters, feeling his face burn up. “I just — ”

“Well? What? I can’t think of any other reason you’d make me get all the way over here but — ”

“No! I swear, I just — ”

“Just _what_?”

He squeezes his eyes shut. “Okay fine! I just asked you to come help me becauseIthinkyou’rereallysmartandIlikeyou,” he blabs quickly.

Her silence shortly afterward tells him…well, this time he doesn’t know.

He slowly opens his eyes to see her reaction.

“Well…” she says, a growing blush and widening smile over her face. “I think I can help you with that.”

And with that, she kisses him on the cheek.


End file.
